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A Tale of Openness and Secrecy: the Philadelphia Story

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A Tale of Openness and Secrecy: the Philadelphia Story Flanked by seven US senators, President Harry S. Truman signs the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. One of the act’s provisions empowered the Atomic Energy Commission to regulate “restricted data,” a new and sweeping category (Courtesy of the US Department of Energy.) A tale of openness and secrecy The Philadelphia Story Alex Wellerstein A now little-known manuscript prepared by nine young physicists as a statement about the futility of scientific secrecy quickly became a test of the limits of free discourse in the nuclear age. Alex Wellerstein is an associate historian in the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland. His book on the history of nuclear secrecy in the US will be published by the University of Chicago Press in 2013, and he runs Restricted Data: The Nuclear Secrecy Blog (http://nuclearsecrecy.com). www.physicstoday.org May 2012 Physics Today 47 Openness and secrecy William E. Stephens (1912–80) joined with eight young colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania in the fall of 1945 to learn, and then publish, details about how the atomic bomb works. They were opposed to the notion of scientific secrecy, but the US War Department saw things differently. (Courtesy of the AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection.) uring the Into the danger zone months im- Led by William Stephens, an assistant professor of mediately physics, each of the nine—five faculty members and D following four graduate students—gave a series of seminars the use of on topics related to the new nuclear world. Stephens the first atomic bombs himself looked at the physics of fission fragments on Japan, a fierce de- and long-term practical applications such as power bate raged concern- generation. Lecturer Margaret Lewis, an as- ing the future of tronomer by training, had the new transuranic ele- scientific freedom. ments as her topic. Knut Krieger, an assistant pro- Former Manhattan fessor of chemistry, discussed the chemistry of Project scientists plutonium, including its separation from spent re- worked to bring the actor fuel. Instructor Simon Pasternack lectured on issue to the forefront of pub- the operation of nuclear reactors, then called piles. lic attention in one of the first major attempts Assistant professor of physics Park Miller Jr covered by US scientists to organize and lobby for specific topics relating to fast neutron fission—including the political action. To what degree would nuclear re- detonation of atomic bombs themselves. All of the search become shackled by the requirements of na- presenters were fairly young. The assistant profes- tional security? Would the open circulation of new sors were in their early thirties and the youngest of scientific knowledge cease if that knowledge was rel- the graduate students was only 22. evant to nuclear fission? Those questions were None of the physicists was an expert in any of the hardly idle speculation: From the fall of 1945 topics presented in the seminars. Indeed, the entire through the summer of 1946, the US Congress was point of the exercise was that they need not be. The crafting new, unprecedented legislation that would Pennsylvania physicists reviewed the copious prewar legally define the bounds of open scientific research published literature on fission—such as the famous and even free speech. The idea of restricting open Niels Bohr and John Wheeler paper of 1939 that out- scientific communication “may seem drastic and far- lined its theoretical mechanism—and the so-called reaching,” President Harry S. Truman argued in an Smyth report, a technical history of the Manhattan October 1945 statement exhorting Congress to rapid Project that had been issued by the government only action. But, he said, the atomic bomb “involves three days after the bombing of Nagasaki. forces of nature too dangerous to fit into any of our The Smyth report, named after its author, usual concepts.” Princeton physicist Henry DeWolf Smyth, had been The former Manhattan Project scientists who issued specifically to sate the appetite of physicists founded what would eventually become the Feder- and journalists with regard to the technology be- ation of American Scientists were adamantly op- hind the bomb, but it only went so far. In many areas posed to keeping nuclear technology a closed field. it had been truncated for security purposes—it From early on they argued that there was, as they barely mentioned plutonium chemistry, for example, put it, “no secret to be kept.” Attempting to control despite that element’s central role in wartime work. It the spread of nuclear weapons by controlling scien- was also meant to let Manhattan Project scientists tific information would be fruitless: Soviet scientists know the boundaries of “safe” speech about the bomb. were just as capable as US scientists when it came The Pennsylvania physicists, however, used the report to discovering the truths of the physical world. The as a starting point and extrapolated into dangerous best that secrecy could hope to do would be to territory wherever they felt their knowledge could slightly impede the work of another nuclear power. take them further. Whatever time was bought by such impediment, The seminars were a success, and the partici- they argued, would come at a steep price in US sci- pants took extensive notes. Those were mimeo- entific productivity, because science required open graphed and compiled in early 1946 into a volume lines of communication to flourish.1 for publication, titled Nuclear Fission and Atomic En- At the University of Pennsylvania were nine ergy. The manuscript was a dense, technical read; scientists sympathetic to that message. All had been however, the introduction, written by the chairman involved with wartime work, but in the area of radar, not the bomb. Because they had not been part of the physics department at the University of Penn- of the Manhattan Project in any way, they were sylvania, Gaylord Harnwell, made the text’s politi- under no legal obligation to maintain secrecy; they cal intent overt: were simply informed private citizens. In the fall of Free and unrestricted research in nu- 1945, they tried to figure out the technical details be- clear physics ceased abruptly in 1941. hind the bomb. Activity in the field went underground 48 May 2012 Physics Today www.physicstoday.org and certain aspects were the subject of tion that would probably be considered classified intense study and investigation in se- by the War Department and should probably be ed- cret under the forced draft of military ited. The Pennsylvania physicists were unhappy urgency and unlimited support.... Un- with that conclusion and held a press conference to fortunately this book perforce marks a denounce scientific censorship. “If the Manhattan departure from traditional scientific District should object to the publication of certain publications, a departure which it is sections,” physicist Miller explained to the press in hoped is only a temporary result of ab- attendance, “we believe they are exceeding their normal post-war conditions.... There authority.”4 is nothing herein that any physicist, be The Manhattan Project censors, however, had he American, English, Russian, French, not yet looked at the manuscript. The Pennsylvania Indian or Chinese, could not already physicists consented to sending a copy of their know if he himself had taken the time to book to the War Department soon thereafter, with rework the excellent report of Dr. H. D. the request that the government confirm their opin- Smyth and the recent literature of physics ion “that the published position of the War Depart- with nuclear fission in mind.2 ment is (as an official spokesman is quoted in the press) that summaries of published unclassified in- Salvo thus prepared, the authors submitted their formation, together with basic scientific comments book to their publisher, McGraw-Hill, in early 1946. and conclusions thereon, do not come within the And the trouble began. terms of any legal restrictions or voluntary rules A murky legal situation which the Government has requested publishers to observe.”5 From there the manuscript was turned During World War II, the Office of Censorship had over for comment to the office of Leslie Groves, been formed to screen US periodicals for sensitive director of the Manhattan Project; Groves’s office information that included, from 1943 onward, de- passed it on to the Manhattan Engineer District’s tails about “atom smashing, atomic energy, atomic Declassification Office. fission and atomic splitting.”3 But the office lacked legal teeth: The censorship was entirely voluntary. A dangerous chapter? A scientist or soldier who gave secret defense infor- From a security point of view, the most problematic mation to a newspaper could be prosecuted under chapter of the Pennsylvania volume was chapter 11, the Espionage Act of 1917. But prosecuting the “Fast neutron chain reaction.” Based on one of newspapers that published such information was Miller’s seminar lectures, its subject was the physics almost unheard of, due to the strong protections of an atomic bomb. granted to the press under the US Constitution’s The chapter covered major topics in the design First Amendment and because prosecuting such of a fission weapon, including methods of calculat- cases would draw more attention to disclosures ing the critical mass for a bomb—that is, the amount than would quiet censure. of fissile material that would be necessary for an ex- In 1946, however, the situation was even ponential nuclear chain reaction. It also included murkier. The Office of Censorship had been dis- discussions of how one would rapidly assemble a banded at the end of the war, and the famously un- super-critical mass of material at the instant of a de- regulated state of the American free press had re- sired nuclear explosion, and no earlier.
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